With the debate on Maoist violence and Operation Green Hunt hotting up, things are taking a disturbing turn. The danger really is that all spaces of radical political movements and indeed the entire space of the Left, part of it gradually vacated by the parliamentary ‘Left’ in recent decades and finally completely abandoned in the last few years, will now be virtually erased. In its place will be installed the phantom of an ‘armed struggle’ that threatens to completely swallow up the spaces once occupied by different shades of the CPI(ML) and the Naxalite movement and other Left-of-CPM groups and movements.
It all began, of course, with the declaration of the Prime Minister some years ago, that Maoism (which is used interchangeably, sometimes out of ignorance and often with deliberation, with Naxalism) ‘was the single biggest security threat to the country’ – a highly exaggerated claim but entirely understandable in retrospect. Understandable because, by reducing the entire spectrum of the non parliamentary Left and all shades of Naxalism – and more importantly all big anti-corporate mass stuggles – to ‘Maoism’, he was deligitimizing the very idea of the Left, as it were. This was the best bet of the fanatically neo-liberal Manhohan-Chidambaram-Montek group – the middle digit of this triumvirate also being more than just an ‘ideological’ neo-liberal; after all he is known to have actual stakes in the well-being of the corporate marauders of Niyamgiri/ Lanjigarh, Goa and other places. Manmohan Singh’s identification of ‘Naxalites’ and ‘left-wing extremism’ as the ‘number one security threat’ makes eminent sense then, for it is only when all these struggles against corporate plunder of the forest and mining areas are defeated can the neo-liberal dream be realized.
It is well known that for quite sometime now state, district and local level administrations in different parts of the country have found it truly rewarding to brand all local activists – even those like the Gandhian Himanshu Kumar or Sandeep Pandey – as Maoists. A case of calling a dog mad before killing it, one might say. Thus when there was a popular rebellion in Nandigram, we saw state CPM leaders allege a ‘Maoist plot’ with a politburo member of the party even alleging that ‘they’ were coming by the sea-route to Nandigram! It did not work that time. But by the time Lalgarh happened, it did. More often than not, this strategy works wonders. And it is employed by administrations and governments irrespective of whether they are run by the BJP, the Congress or the CPM.
This strategy suits the intentions and plans of corporate plunderers, the ruling coterie and their cheer-leaders in the media. Thus the effort to relentlessly reduce every voice of protest to ‘Maoism’. And it is here that the symbiosis between the state and its mimicry – in the form of the ‘state-to-be’ (codenamed ‘Maoism/Maoist’) – becomes most evident. Each needs the other. A pervasive myth is manufactured through this symbiosis – a myth that has lately found expression through some very articulate and high-profile voices among sections of the radical intelligentsia: The myth of the Maoist as the answer to Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and corporate designs in the forest and mining areas. This myth goes hand in hand with another: that the Maoist only takes up arms and kills because s/he (or her loved ones) is being killed and raped day in and day out. This is a story that has been endlessly retailed in the past few months and seems to be fast becoming some kind of common sense.
And yet, there is a sleight of hand involved here. In the first place, this myth deliberately screens out the fact that nowhere have the really powerful resistances to corporate and neo-liberal designs been more effective than where these resistances were actual mass movements. From Singur and Nandigram to Pen Raigad and Goa, to the various unreported and ‘unspectacular’ struggles in Jharkhand and Orissa, every struggle that has succeeded in rolling back such designs has been a mass struggle. There have, in fact, been even much older struggles like the Koel Karo struggle that have succeded in stalling the dam project without ever picking up the gun. This is not to say that these are non-violent Gandhian struggles. Yes, there was violence in Kalinganagar, Singur and Nandigram. In Kalinganagar, it was the naked violence of the state that came into full view and put a huge question mark over the ethics of the ‘Development’ neo-liberal style. In Singur, too, it was the violence of the police against the unarmed peasants that was on display. It was different in Nandigram – but there it was not really violence against aparticular set of people (at least initially) but a kind of symbolic violence against the CPM offices that gave vent to the anger that had boiled over once the information of impending land acquisition leaked out. It was only when the party-state violence began to be unleashed on the rebellion that more direct bloodshed took place. At any rate, the violence there had a close connection with breakdown of the long reign of unspoken terror in rural Bengal. The struggles that followed Nandigram – the Nandigram effect – in other parts of the country, or struggles that acquired a new legitimacy after it, put the state on the backfoot.Violence in all these cases was exercised at the limit point – or not at all. At any rate, it was more a consequence of mass anger – not the premeditated terroristic attack of a force armed to the teeth.
It can be argued, in fact, that violence may at times become necessary in the course of an otherwise non-violent mass movement. In a country like India, it may be difficult to even contest a panchayat election, let alone win it, if the force of upper caste landlords’ armed might is not met with a deterrent – a possibility of retaliation. Such violence – or simply a threat of violence – is very different from the cult of the gun that has now become part and parcel of a celebratory rhetoric of the Maoists and their intellectual supporters.
The sleight of hand is also apparent at another level. It lies in the representation of the ‘Maoist’ as someone forced to resort to arms under threat of his/her life and honour. This representation obliterates the distinction that is most crucial here: The Maoist – as in the party and its leadership – is a worshipper of violence independent of any contingency and needs to be discussed separately from those hundreds of others who might be attracted towards it in specific circumstances as the armed might of the Maoists seems to provide them some security against the violence of the state. A quick glance at the history of the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre should be enough to convince anyone that their attachment to violence is independent of everything else. Violence is to them not merely legitimate but a necessary means of achieving political ends – that is, ‘capture of state power’. Thus when sections of the radical intelligentsia demand ‘unconditional talks with the Maoists’ of the government, one is not quite sure what the talks are supposed to be about. Are they talks meant to negotiate something specific, say the several MOUs that have been signed between the government and the corporations? If that is the case, will the Maoists give up arms or armed struggle were these to be scrapped? Clearly not. The Maoists are fighting for state power and have made no bones about it. Then what are the talks meant to be – except as a ruse to buy time strategically, in order to regroup and reorganize?
It is true that in the aftermath of the final defeat of the Narmada Bachao Andolan – where every effort by the movement to seek redressal within the framework of the state’s institutions, its judiciary and its political process was met with cynical disregard – the Maoist option did begin to seem attractive to some people. Even leaders like Medha Patkar and BD Sharma, for example, began to express doubts about what signals the state was sending and whether allying with the Maoists was not something to be seriously considered. Needless to say, such a feeling of desperation among these stalwarts of people’s movements says more about the state than about military violence as a strategic option. As a matter of fact, it is well known that in many places where the Maoists hold sway, their extortion economy functions by making peace with contractors and corporations and with the local development bureaucracy. So clearly, the mere fact that at some point the Maoist option can seem attractive to some people is not argument enough, either about its ethicality or indeed, its efficacy.
At any rate, we know that the historical destiny of all twentieth century revolutions has been to simply ‘build capitalism’: armed struggle or no armed struggle, no ‘socialist’ experiment has produced anything but a more ruthless capitalism and and even more ruthelss modernity at the end of the day. Even Prachanda, at the end of a decade-long Maoist insurgency, after he assumed power, had to asssure the Nepal Chamber of Commerce and Industry not to be frightened – for the Maoists only wanted to build capitalism.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
The author seems to be unaware about the Marxist praxis on “building capitalism,” at least the comments and laments are quite naive. A made-easy by Prof. Patnaik can help anyone who wants to understand this praxis, you can find it here http://www.pragoti.org/node/519?news_id=519
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Aditya – thanks for the post and I concur with your sentiment, although the following has me puzzled: “At any rate, we know that the historical destiny of all twentieth century revolutions has been to simply ‘build capitalism’: armed struggle or no armed struggle, no ’socialist’ experiment has produced anything but a more ruthless capitalism and and even more ruthelss modernity at the end of the day.”
Seems a little sweeping? Are you being sarcastic here? If not, how long is ‘the end of the day’? Are you suggesting that the Russian Revolution of 1917 produced neoliberal Russia of the 1990s? That’s a long day. Some clarification would be welcome.
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Saibal, the piece by Prabhat that you refer to was written for internal party catechism. It should not have been published in EPW at all. My own ‘naivete’ comes out of thirty years of marxist practice and theoretical engagement and I have my own take on the ‘marxist’ enterprise of building capitalism which, if you are interested, you will find in the kafila archives. But you might want to update your idea of Marxist practice and theory with some other work that has emerged in the last two decades. Though one does not agree with all of it, one can think of works as diverse as those of David Harvey, Antonio Negri, some work of the Rethinking Marxism school and a whole lot of more practice-oriented work that has begun to think of and experiment with cooperative forms of ownership outside the circuits of capital. You could also look at the actual practice of the PT in Brazil (despite its innumerable problems), of Evo Morales’ Bolivia and Chavez’ Venezuela – and of course the more recent developments in Cuba. You and your party might benefit by going beyond Mikhail Kalecki and Schumpeter.
Marcus, I do not mean that the Russian revolution of 1917 produced neo-liberal Russia of the 1990s; I mean that right from Lenin’s time – authoritarian, bourgeois forms of one-man management, Taylorist methods of factory organization and the idea of ‘bettering capitalism’ on its own ground became very much an established orthodoxy. Much more work on all that exists which I am sure you are aware of. It really has been a long day!:)
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As I read this., I find myself reading Habermas’ thoughts (from the 90s, in the New Left Review) on where can ‘Marxism as critique’ take us in a world where the ‘socialist’ experiment has failed.
– ” Social democracy has, then, to pay a double price for its success. It does without radical democracy and learns to
live with the normatively undesirable consequences of capitalist economic growth—as well as with the risks
inherent in the labour market, which one can cushion, but not altogether eliminate, with welfare policies. This is
the price that kept a non-communist Left, to the left of the social democrats, alive. This non-communist Left has
many guises, and keeps alive the idea that socialism once meant more than state-welfare policies. However, the
fact that self-managing socialism remains in its programme is indicative of the difficulty it has in distancing itself
from a holistic conception of society, and giving up the notion of a switch from a market-led to a democratically
controlled production process. This was the best way of keeping the classical link between theory and practice
intact, but also the best way of ensuring that theory became orthodox, and practice sectarian….
The roots that bind romantic socialism to its original context of early industrialism have lain bare for a long
time. The idea of a free association of producers has always been loaded with nostalgic images of the types of
community—the family, the neighbourhood and the guild—to be found in the world of peasants and craftsmen
that, with the violent onset of a competitive society, was just beginning to break down, and whose disappearance
was experienced as a loss. The idea of the preservation of these eroded communities has been connected with
‘socialism’ ever since these earliest days; amid the work conditions and new forms of social interaction of early
industrialism, the aim was to salvage and transform the forces of social integration of the passing era. The
socialism about whose normative content Marx refused to speak is Janus-faced, looking back to an idealized past
as much as it looks forward to a future dominated by industrial labour.”
Habermas, Jurgen. What Does Socialism Mean Today? The Rectifying Revolution and The Need for New thinking on the Left. New Left Review. Sept- Oct 1990
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It might also be relevant to remind us of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s famous Public Culture essay “Universalism and Belonging in the Logic of Capital” that points out the hegemony of modernity in which the Euro-Marxist telos (H’s romantic Marxism that assumes withering of private property in a set-up where ‘industrial production’ is the primary economic order) is situated – that any ‘socialist experiment’ is about doing capital differently from them capitalists.
– “Marx’s philosophical category capital is planetary
(or global) in its historical aspiration and universal in its constitution. Its categorical
structure, at least in Marx’s own elaboration, is predicated on Enlightenment
ideas of juridical equality and abstract political rights of citizenship.1 Labor that
is juridically and politically free—and yet socially unfree—is a concept embedded
in Marx’s category of “abstract labor.” Abstract labor combines in itself
Enlightenment themes of juridical freedom (rights, citizenship) and the concept
of the universal and abstract human being who is the subject of this freedom.
More important, it is also a concept central to Marx’s explanation of why capital, in fulfilling itself in history, necessarily creates the ground for its own dissolution,in fulfilling itself in history, necessarily creates the ground for its own dissolution. Examining the idea of abstract labor then enables us to see what may be
politically and intellectually at stake today—for postcolonial scholars who do
not ignore Marx’s legacy—in the universalist humanism of the Enlightenment.”
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Universalism and Belonging in the Logic of Capital. Public Culture. 12(3). 653-678.
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Thanks, Atreyee for the two references. I was not aware of Dipesh’s piece and though I had read Habermas’ long back, I had no recollection of it. Both these seem to have some resonance with what I am trying to think through.
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i dont know but this issue of thesisxi may be relevant
Thesis Eleven, Number 97, May 2009:
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What is missing from the polemics is a critique of the basic tenets of Maoism. Individual terrorism, killing individual policemen , hijacking trains etc. have generally been condemned as terrorist acts but perceived as the real reason we should be opposing Maoism. In reality they are symptoms of the fundamental fallacy in Maoism which believes in the Che Guevarist theory of “individual” revolutionary acts as opposed to Mass Struggle conducted by the majority under the vanguard of a Revolutionary Party.
The firebrand Revolutionary of the 60’s , Asim Chatterjee , in a recent article, while condemning Maoism , has repeated the same mistake by stating that it is fundamentally right to take up arms to overthrow an oppressive social order. Therein lies the disconnect. The Communist Party has a right to organize the masses , resort to democratic means of struggle and fight democratic elections and ultimately take up arms only when it is not allowed to do so through rigged elections, suspension of the Constitution or ultimate overthrow of an elected Government as in Chile (Salvador Allende ). Hugo Chavez is a brilliant example of the fact that they are not always successful.
Even if the Maoists are successful in captuting power , it will lead to a top-down kind of Socialism witnessed to a large extent in Soviet Union and China.
The Maoists have thus to be opposed as also the State which use this as a cobvenient and handy ploy to subjugate and unleash terror on a vast majority of its own populace.
This was the objective of the statement issued by Noam Chomsky, Arundhati and others.
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Dear Professor Nigam,
I appreciate your thoughtful post, as always, and in general, I greatly admire your writings for their ability to combine theoretical sophistication with verbal clarity. However, as a young Ph.D student working in Maoist India, I find two major problems with the content and tone of this post.
Firstly, the semantic and theoretical equation of the state and the rebels (under the label “Maoist”) does not, I think, portray everyday realities for men and women in the forest regions of eastern and central India. Of course, these are the macro categories through which the national media, intelligentsia, state, political parties and certain “Maoist spokespersons” (mis)represent everyday realities. For the moment, I shall ignore the theoretical problem of how macro categories in a conflict relate to micro-level realities. Instead, I want to put two empirically-verifiable (though certainly contestable) propositions on the table. On the one hand, the label “Maoist” refers to a number of anti-state groups that are linked loosely, so at best, here is a kind of “coalition of the willing,” albeit with diverse goals. Since I focus primarily on Jharkhand, I can safely say that even in a single state, a large number of anti-state rebel groups are being now treated by the state and the media as unified actors enjoying a high degree of coordination. This is, to put it simply, state-sponsored propaganda. On the other hand, the relative power of the state vis-a-vis various rebel groups and factions is lopsided. There really isn’t a contest here, which is why guerrilla tactics are essential in a war of position. In terms of the structural and physical violence perpetrated by the state on the forest dwellers of east and central India, there’s again no comparison between the state and various rebels. Whereas the so-called Maoists carefully coordinate attacks on specific human and material targets associated with an illegitimate state in these areas, the history of state-making in these areas is one of brutal violence and naked plunder/exploitation. Even the most extreme forms of state propaganda put rebel-inflicted casualties at 400-500 (almost all police/paramilitary personnel and their local allies) over the last five years, so we’re talking of an extremely low-intensity conflict in which violence is extremely selective. To equate both sides of the conflict at the regional, state and local levels is, therefore, grossly misleading. This sort of characterization not only misrepresents the dynamics of the conflict, but may even unwittingly support the status quo (though this may be far from your intention).
Secondly, I am disturbed by the extent to which this post, like many other thoughtful responses in the print media, simply ignores the question of who is a “Maoist.” In almost every case, ordinary tribal women and men are the rank and file of the “Maoist” cadres. Even those who might be termed “vanguardist” generally come from outside metropolitan India or the rural gentry. Individually and collectively, they have found their material and political condition decline in the postcolonial era. Amit Prakash’s book on Jharkhand goes further to even use govt. economic data to support this popular “internal colonialism” thesis. The state is either absent in these areas or is predatory in collaboration with various private moneyed interests, the latest of which are several large foreign and domestic mining and industrial firms. To put it bluntly, there are excellent historical reasons for people regarding the state as an illegitimate form of sovereignty above them. The radical democracy sought in these forest areas, therefore, proposes an anti-state form of popular sovereignty. Naturally, radical democracy, whether sought in India, 19th century France or 17th century England, entails “common” people taking up arms to defend their liberties against an illegitimate state. In this sense, the so-called Maoists in Jharkhand, WB, Orissa and Chhatisgarh are closer to the spirit of the Levellers and Diggers than to Mao’s or Lenin’s grandiose schemes of state-directed socialism. Indeed, I am willing to go further to suggest that there are strong anarchistic and voluntaristic strains within the popular movement in Maoist India. These are, however, not taken seriously because the media is far too interested in Chhatradhar Mahato, Kobal Ghandy and Kishenji. Should we not take seriously the various meanings and motivations at the micro-level, I ask, instead of being bombarded by the stupidity of a war-mongering media?
To conclude, in response to the question of whether space is shrinking on the Left, I’d like to point out that the non-parliamentary left in India as well as in post-industrial societies has virtually no popular base. Numerically, it is found predominantly in the groves of the academy, where it often (though not always) various excuse for inaction. While the knowledge factory has been producing Ph.Ds by the ton since the ’70s and much hand-wringing about “subaltern” agency in colonial India has occurred, popular politics in the areas now deemed to be Maoist got virtually no attention. All our efforts seem to have been spent in producing various discourses regarding discourses, or worse still, crunching numbers to legitimate state and corporate policies. The tendency towards elitism is intrinsic to our profession, especially in our brahmin-dominated country and its academic institutions, and the non-parliamentary left has, I’m afraid, succumbed far too often to that tendency. So let’s be clear: the Maoists are not shrinking any leftist space; they’re merely taking over vacant lots left behind by elitist academics and the parliamentary left over the past three decades. Of course, there is much scope for academics and activists to reclaim space either in conversation with or in opposition to the “Maoists.” But that requires a radical alternative that is at least better than, if not equal to, the prevailing option. Am I missing one that’s around?
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P.S. Apologies for the overly long response :)
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Uday Chandra’s response to this post is the most cogent writing I have read so far on the whole debate around Maoists. I would like him to expand his empirical observations and his theoretical arguments further and publish a proper essay on the issue in some journal. This is a very, very impressive and critical intervention to the debate. It should provoke the middle-class intelligentsia who are sensitively interested in the issue to push their position towards a more self-critical and risky sphere of engagement. Merely hiding under the blanket of “democratic” legitimacy won’t help any political cause if the premises are, at the core, antithetical to not merely the ‘idea’ of a democratic state but its ‘ideology’.
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ps – I don’t mean I don’t accept Aditya’s position or concern regarding a few things. I am quite anti-vanguardist in any form and I believe any “cult” politics which tries to usurp movements with ideological agendas which narrow themselves down to crude violence is an option we have to accept just because things are bad. I find Uday’s intervention credible in the sense that there is lot of fiction which is still held in the name of responding to the movement, but if there is any fiction I believe in it is State power. I think this Maoists-as-“mirror image”-of-the-State argument has to be abandoned. This is an incorrect, defeatist position.
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correction – I meant we DON’T have to accept crude violence as an option.
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Dear Uday,
Thanks a lot for your very engaging comments. I am certainly in agreement with you on a number of things – including, coincidentally, your comment regarding ‘internal colonialism’, as I have been working on a piece for a journal where I refer to this idea. My disagreement with your two main points, however, remain. And these are not matters that can be refuted with more facts. You seem to say, for example, that:
Now, at one level, I am probably dealing with the same empirical material when I say that a whole lot of activists on the ground (including many non-CPI-Maoist Naxalite groups) are being dubbed as ‘Maoists’ by the state and local administration. In fact, I include here many more people who are not even ‘Naxal’ in any sense – say Roma in Sonbhadra, or Himanshu Kumar of Chhattisgarh – who are being thus dubbed. Yet, my reading differs from yours quite substantially, in that I do not see this as a ‘coalition of the willing’ for Himanshu, for instance pushed into the Maoists’ arms by the final act of the state in demolishing this Gandhian’s ashram.
However, it is possible that you are referring to an entirely different set of empirical material which has to do with divisions within the CPI-Maoist. Here, my sense of these is that there are two kinds of things going on:
(1) In a situation where there is an underground military outfit like that of the CPI-Maoist, eventually, it is the writ of the local commander or dalam leader that runs and it is not always possible for higher political committees to meet and take decisions. Mao Tsetung called this the ideology of the ‘roving guerrilla bands’, whose major characteristic he defines thus: ‘Some people want to increase our political influence only by means of roving guerrilla actions, but are unwilling to increase it by undertaking the arduous task of building up base areas and establishing the people’s political power.’ Thus the impression that these people do not run under any unified command.
(2) The other thing which happens in such cases is that many completely apolitical, sometimes criminal elements find it expedient in such a situation to join the ‘movement’ and carry out their personal vendetta (call anybody a police agent and kill). There is enough evidence of this kind of thing from the Bihar/Jharkhand region itself. Reports (and studies) indicate that often caste wars were also being fought under party banners. The conflict between the MKSS (Party Unity) and the MCC, in the pre-merger phase, was merely a displaced caste conflict with the MKSS having the Dalit base and the Yadavas lining up behind the MCC.
High degrees of secrecy and military methods of simply killing of comrades who have fallen out (and could bring many such thing to light), lead to situations where these things remain in the dark. Yet, people who are politically involved in the region know what exactly is going on there.
Secondly, Uday, I frankly remain unimpressed by the fact that so many of the actual Maoists are adivasis who have been force to take up guns. My experience in actual politics tells me that they are nothing but cannon fodder – they have not picked up guns to capture state power and build a Maoist India. Their desperate situation impels them to pick up arms – but those in command are the Ganapathys, the Koteswara Raos, the Kobad Ghandys. Chhatradhar Mahato should not be put in this category, for till date he has refused to be cannon fodder. Chhatradhar Mahato’s and the PCPAs rebellion recalled the Santhal hools of yore, and did not give a call to capture state power. But all that is another story. The important thing is that adivasis who have become cannon fodder, have done so because often the aims of the party are kept secret from them as well and by the time they know, there is no going back. Unlike the Levellers and Diggers, they are led by vanguards from afar..
And finally, if there is no Left alternative around (others being decrepit and/or ineffective), I do not feel compelled to support this current. If Marx or even Mao had picked their politics from what was on offer on the menu, we might have not seen anything new emerge. And yes, I do insist that there is a vast space of Left politics – and many different organizations and movements – that exist. Just that they do not add up to a central military command. And this space is shrinking thanks to the jugalbandi being sung by the state and the Maoists.
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Thanks, Manash and Aditya, for your comments and criticisms. I should clarify, lest it wasn’t clear earlier, that I’m not interested in defending any methods or ideas currently attributable to groups termed “Maoist” in India. Neither do I want us to remain confined to the current menu of political options. Instead, I am keen to use this critical juncture today to push for fresh thinking, new political possibilities, and alternatives to the status quo. And to my mind, doing so necessarily demands entering what Manash has called a “risky sphere of engagement.” Another clarification concerns my earlier remark that ““Maoist” refers to a number of anti-state groups that are linked loosely, so at best, here is a kind of “coalition of the willing,” albeit with diverse goals” Here, I am certainly not referring to the likes of Himanshu Kumar and other activists, academics and NGO workers who explicitly reject political violence (though certain elements in the Indian state may be keen to somehow portray them as “sympathizers”). I mean the wide range of what the state terms “extreme left groups,” many of whom merged in late 2004 and the rest of whom have sprung up in the past five years. Obviously, the MCC and PWG are the two largest organized groups here. And yes, in the limited areas where these groups operate under the CPI (Maoist) banner, there are good reasons to be concerned that they mimic the state by setting up their parallel administrative structures at national, state and district levels. As an anarchist, I’m most sympathetic to these concerns, and my travels in these areas make me aware that conscription and “extortion” are commonplace in these MCC/PWG areas.
However, it is at this point that my call for empirical engagement kicks in. What are the areas in which these two groups operate? And what proportion is it of the overall territory deemed to be under “Maoist” control by the MHA? I am essentially arguing that (1) the mainstream media and the state are grossly overstating the control and influence of these two organized groups, and (2) they ascribe a kind of all-India unity and agenda based on the MCC-PWG merger of 2004 and their over-the-top party documents since then. Both the media and the state need to find a convenient or easily-identifiable enemy for propaganda purposes, so this is basically our domestic media-generated “Al Qaeda phenomenon.” It hardly needs to be pointed out that this is a highly top-down view of the matter much like in the US case.
Take, for instance, the MCC, which operates predominantly in Gaya and its adjoining districts in north Jharkhand (Palamau, Chhatra, Latehar). But what about the rest of the state? The same is true for all of Orissa and West Bengal (barring a small pocket in West Midnapore). Political control in these large swathes of territory is highly fragmented, as you may know, between dozens of local groups and their factions. District administrations carry long lists of these “extreme left groups,” and staying in villages clarifies who operates where and how. It is true that social banditry (what you term “criminal activities”) is widespread in these areas outside state and MCC control. Every violent conflict has its own political economy after all. Also, it is fairly axiomatic that, at the micro-level of a civil war, macro categories rooted in ideology (e.g. North and South, Communist and Nationalist, Royalist and Parliamentarian) break down to reveal all sorts of local motives and agendas, whether of individuals or of groups (see Stathis Kalyvas’ The Logic of Violence in Civil War for an elaboration of this thesis). But the assumption of CPI (Maoist) unity based on certain speech acts and documents is untenable on the ground. As you note, the MCC comes out of its own regional history of caste warfare in central and south Bihar (now northern Jharkhand). The same can be said for the PWG in the Telegana region. Other groups such as the PLFI (formerly JLT) in central and south Jharkhand emerge from even more limited spatial-cum-historical contexts. Their agendas are only loosely related, and may even be at odds with each other. The dalam or any such organizational or strategic element is, therefore, not a top-down model that is being replicated everywhere on an all-India basis. In many places in eastern and central India, for instance, the dalam-style organization is, in fact, conspicuous by its absence.
In short, I am arguing for understanding the current conflict in bottom-up fashion, both empirically and theoretically. This is not due to some a priori ideological preference for the “subaltern” view. Rather, I think bottom-up thinking can not only appreciate the nuances of the social phenomenon under discussion, but also direct our criticisms at more precise targets. Broadly speaking, I think a demarcation ought to be made between two ideal types: areas in which large, organized military groups operate, and areas in which they don’t. The dynamics of conflict are different as are the aims, the methods of recruitment, the political economy, and the responses of historically-subjugated populations therein. My earlier argument came primarily from fieldwork in central and south Jharkhand as well as their neighboring districts in WB, Orissa, and Chhatisgarh (Greater Jharkhand, if you prefer). That is, the second ideal type identified here. Here, it is possible for Francis Induvar to be beheaded, regardless of the wishes of Koteswara Rao et al, because control is primarily in local hands. Notions of territoriality are clearly local, and the thoughts of Mao, Lenin or Marx are pretty much irrelevant to popular struggles. The current politics follows from, for example, the successful non-violent resistance against the Koel-Karo hydroelectric project in the ‘90s. Tapping kin and community networks are the principal means for mobilizing popular support. Violence, though seen as morally undesirable, is regarded as a necessary evil against policemen and paramilitaries. Modern sovereignty, as everyone now realizes, is all about whose violence is legitimate in a given area. At the same time, those who are not competitors in the sovereignty stakes — the district administration, NGO workers, activists and academics — move around unmolested (at best, one might be stopped and questioned before entering a village). National state power is clearly not the goal here. It is more a question of negotiating regional and local autonomy for long-oppressed communities, or fundamentally different relations between the center and the periphery, in a manner that recalls this region’s history in the early modern period c. 1707-1820. Hence, so-called “Maoists” demand vigilance to check corruption in NREGA implementation, ask for a right to food and drought relief, and read out the new forest legislation to the local administration. This is not the behavior of armed groups who seek to capture Delhi, but those who wish to re-negotiate using arms their terms of subjugation vis-à-vis the postcolonial Indian polity. By no means are the adivasis “cannon fodder” or puppets here since they are both principals and agents in this game. Many of the criticisms that can be directed against areas under MCC and PWG control, say, in Bastar today, thus do not hold true in areas where they don’t operate.
Having said so, I should add that the local dynamics of PWG control in Bastar are also not quite as they appear from above. When BJP candidates won almost all the seats in Bastar to re-elect the Raman Singh government in 2007, it was clearly against the wishes of the All-India Maoist Politburo. But these were the sorts of pragmatic accommodations that local cadres made to further popular goals of autonomy. The hushed voices revealing such information may not be heard often, but the acts themselves speak louder than the verbosity of the ideologues above, who naturally frown upon such “deviations” below. But to my mind, this is a fairly typical case of the high church frowning upon folk practices and beliefs. Here, I’d like to bring to your attention a 1979 article in Theory and Society published by (my Ph.D adviser) James Scott, titled “Revolution in the Revolution: Peasants and Commissars.” We cannot simply assume a top-down model of influence even in the MCC/PWG areas, though these large organizations clearly exert exclusive political control over their territories. Neither can we refer, I think, to “criminal” elements benefitting from local upheavals because social banditry is intrinsic to the logic of state breakdown or fragmented sovereignty. In any case, what is the meaning of “criminality” where the laws of the state are themselves being contested?
I concede, however, that a number of valid criticisms of MCC-PWG practices can and ought to be made. Chief among these is the inability to build physical infrastructure to support local communities and permit them to bring their distinctive visions of modernity into fruition. You’ll agree, I think, that the exclusively political nature of the sovereignty battles often prevents any meaningful “development” work from being conducted by Maoist cadres. Furthermore, I feel uneasy about the blowing up the few sarkari schools that exist locally even if these are the places where paramilitaries camp and store their weaponry. Koteswara Rao in his recent Tehelka interview admits as much, and goes on to invite various professionals in education and health care, including committed government officials, to work in Maoist areas. But these are mere words that fail to convince me at this point at least. Finally, control over local resources is very important indeed, but it means nothing if there are no plans to utilize these in sustainable ways. Some covert collaboration with NGOs is taking place in areas outside MCC-PWG control, but there’s nothing systematic yet. Nor can there be anything substantive in the current climate of fear and hysteria generated by the media-state nexus.
Whether or not these criticisms lead to a rejection of the “Maoist” option in toto depends on the kind of moral reasoning one employs. For those opposed to violence in a blanket sense, a wholesale rejection is easier. I’m afraid that seems other-worldly to me, given the lamentably violent nature of our political culture for the past two decades, which itself arises from flawed (neo-colonial?) state-society relations. But yes, I am willing to agree that there may be significant deficiencies in the MCC-PWG model of political control to look for better options and more pro-people possibilities. That, however, does not, I think, provide a basis for dismissing emancipatory possibilities immanent in areas outside MCC-PWG control.
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Uday,
Thank you for a series of succinct interventions. Now that social banditry, fragmented sovereignty and James Scott are on the table, let me pick up some moments from your comments to ask the question would the tribal citizen (potential ‘fodder’ for Maoist outfits) be very differently oriented towards the postcolonial state’s projects, had modernity gone miraculously right in their immediate geographies?
Anna Tsing coins the term ‘frontiers of capitalism’ for these geographies that are attractive for extractive or other industries that are interested in overhaul of the natural demographic package so as to churn land/forest/soil into raw material (focussing a resource lens onto landscape), which then serendipitously create a series of other interests/subjectivities in the course of this overhaul where the earlier (community?) equilibrium has gone haywire. I had the opportunity to chat with Tsing yesterday, who pointed out sardonically that given all the talk the ‘right’ kind of political model that balance enough rebellion with least casualty, perhaps one should ask if modernity gone wrong is worse than modernity gone right.
So as much as I am wedded to the anarchist lens of seeing the tribal subject as a principal and agent of violence in particular theaters in which they find themselves, perhaps one should not throw out the question whether in the absence of shaking of equilibrium (given the Maoist cartography belt is miraculously coincident with cartography that attracts big industrial capital- POSCO being the recent history of such coincidence) in their landscapes, these agents would rather not occupy the mirror-image of tranquil orchid farmers of Western Europe. To evoke Tsing again, i would ask if this particular rainbow of far-left actors that have arisen in the past few years has something to do with the postcolonial state becoming a ‘crony’ of global capital to plug itself into supply chains for global capitalism.
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Uday,
Learning from your comments, pleasantly surprised that such voices are around.
Aditya,
I am quite unimpressed by left, right or any other defined or semi-defined ‘thinking’ however the human capacity to think is very interesting to me, with that respect, I am wondering about your statement:
“I frankly remain unimpressed by the fact that so many of the actual Maoists are adivasis who have been force to take up guns. My experience in actual politics tells me that they are nothing but cannon fodder –“
For a minute if we substitute ‘adivasi maoists’ with ‘humans’ who took up a particular non-impulsive action and studied it, your statement above removes the possibility that this set of humans of ever/never having the ability to ‘think and act’ in any capacity. That, the only option for these humans is to be acted upon or manipulated to act, which sums up the extremely offensive term for a free human –cannon fodder! Maybe true in some political science terminology, but for me the reducing of a complex organism like a human to this state of simplicity is simply stunning or a stunningly simple understanding of how humans go about assessing adversity and how they strategize to survive it.
Atrayee,
If the adivasi is the arbitrator-participant in the decision making of managing modernity under non-adverse conditions, he may choose orchid farming or mining operation or anything else. The decisions are more likely to involve community benefits, as the environment is an extension of the humans in their way of life. Modernity would be handled quite differently and in far more sophisticated ways than the capitalist setting up industries with zero knowledge of how the environment works combined with callous disregard for how it sustains.
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I am slightly daunted by the texts cited. Let me begin in a different way. Maoists (PWG/MCC/now CPI Maoist) do not exhaust the entirity of revolutionary parties in India. Even if there was no Maoist party, the state will use any excuse to suppress struggles. The problem is one of building a mass movement without resorting to egrigious violence, and when the state nakedly crushes the rights of the people from whose sovreign will it supposedly draws legitimacy from, there is a right to overthrow the state by force.
This even a Locke will accept – He would, in practice, probably place impossible qualifications on such an action. The issue we face is that of a pre-determined schema into which all reality is made to fit. The issue of armed struggle, boycott of elections, acceptance of Marxism Leninisn are not self evident axioms but a realisation that has to be established in practice. Not merely the practice of a militant vanguard but the practice of communities in which the struggles are located.
Present ML practice is to lead with the human subject – the leaders excepted – as the recipient of doctrine, direction and justice. What is lacking here in this cult of the “objective” is the reality of the conscious, aware subjects transforming themselves through a transformation of reality.
A revolutionary theory will have to recognise the centrality of the conscious subject of the revolution – not a mere instrument of the revolution – as the fulcrum of its praxis. In a backward semi-serf society such as India, the subject is often crude, illiterate, brutal, sexist, either as a proponent or quiscent acceptor, and often victim to the blandishments of patronage.
Enabling this subject to conscious action involves
revolutionising its world outlook through systematic collective effort.
Revolutionary praxis involves this as much as mobilisng on issues of immediate concern to the subject.
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Atreyee,
You raise some three really important questions that I’ve been thinking about myself over the past year or two.
Firstly, you allude to something intrinsic to the geography/topgraphy of Middle India, which appears to bear some similarities to Jim Scott’s Zomia in terms of ecology, political economy and state formation. I plan to work on a similar project on the poorly-studied region of Chotanagpur after this current one. But for now, I hasten to remind you that Jim’s thesis plays out in the longue duree much in the manner of Braudel’s studies of the Mediterranean basin. What is persuasive in the very long run does not, I think, become persuasive by default in the (very?) short run from 1947 – today. So I think those who grabbed power in Delhi and brownwashed the colonial state in 1947 had multiple options before them, as evidenced by the vibrant Constituent Assembly debates. How the views of Jaipal Singh, Raphael Horo, etc, were ignored by Nehru and Patel then and again later during states’ reorganization is worth considering here. Shiv Vishwananthan summed up this exchange brilliantly in his 2006 Verrier Elwin Lecture (available online, I believe). There were alternative articulations of modernity that were clearly dismissed summarily (and are still being neglected today). It makes no sense to me, therefore, to romanticize the tribal as an anti-modern subject operating in a different temporality and under a different mode of production than other postcolonial subjects in South Asia. Geography may matter in the long run, but in the short run, I tend to place greater emphasis on political economy in state-making practices and processes.
Secondly, you conclude from your interaction with Anna Tsing: “perhaps one should ask if modernity gone wrong is worse than modernity gone right.” Who said this is modernity gone wrong? It was very much the intent of the Congress at the time of independence to exploit the natural resources of Middle India for “national development.” This intention has wonderfully been brought to fruition by the internal colonialism of these regions since 1947. The return of primitive accumulation in neoliberal India ought to be seen as merely the latest round in this game. Modernity clearly seems to have gone “right” from the liberal Nehruvian viewpoint. Had they heeded alternative calls of development and inclusion in the early postcolonial era, perhaps modernity would’ve gone nicely “wrong” and Tsing’s thesis could have played out in Middle India.
Finally, you write: “i would ask if this particular rainbow of far-left actors that have arisen in the past few years has something to do with the postcolonial state becoming a ‘crony’ of global capital to plug itself into supply chains for global capitalism.” I cannot help but sympathize with this line of thinking. However, as I’ve pointed out above, the current wave of neoliberal capitalism ought to be seen as merely the latest phase in which the liberal-modernity of the Constitution plays out sordidly. By stressing this continuing across postcolonial periods, I’m obviously not saying anachronistically that Ambedkar, Patel and Nehru were neoliberal visionaries, nor that they could’ve foreseen the current state of affairs. Rather, the present builds on the foundations laid by the previous two generations. Think of Tata operating in a corner of Chotanagpur since the 1920s, and its history since then. What have various adivasi groups benefited from Tata’s activities? The history of mining exploration goes back further to the 1890s. Scientific forestry goes back to the 1860s. Doesn’t the present adivasi demand for control over local/regional resources need to be seen in this historical context? It’s not some sudden reaction to neoliberalism in India. It’s in the very (liberal) logic of late-colonial and postcolonial state formation in South Asia (not just India)!
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Uday, you say: The return of primitive accumulation in neoliberal India ought to be seen as merely the latest round in this game.
– That’s brilliantly put. And it propels me to ask you whether the ‘latest’ round must be slightly differently understood for it churn up such a curious range of the ‘far’ and/or the ‘left’ at this particular historic moment, recognising the fact that Nehurvian liberalisation (which includes the making of steel towns like Jamshedpur and petroleum refinery and port cities like Ankleshwar and Haldia) has had many more rounds of primitive accumulation though the 60s and 70s. In one sense, the snatching of privy purses and ceiling of landed states are also a kind of primitive accumulation that set the stage for Nehruvian nationmaking right from the 1950s. But why does this round of primitive accumulation evoke the kind of left intelligentsia outrage and why the range of anti-state outfits are a harvest of this particular round. I was most struck by the various Bengali versions of the term ‘land acquisition’ that I heard in Haldia this summer. A more Sanskritic one being ‘jomi otigrohon’ that is part of common parlance in peri-urban West Bengal now.
My very naive conjecture would be the teastalls in Haldia would not be shelling out jokes about ‘jomi’ in the 70s round of primitive accumulation at the time of setting up of the state-owned petroleum refinery. If the current ‘far-left’ extravaganza is not in some ways related to modernity gone wrong (in the sense of the postcolonial state taking away land and resource and NOT delivering electricity and jobs in return) I wonder how one can make sense of the fact East Medinipur (where Haldia is situated) and West Medinipur (where Lalgarh, Shalboni and other Maoist strongholds are situated)bear a vast difference in employment levels, rural development indicators like electricity, roads, etc.
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Actually, Atreyee, it all depends on how one interprets the history of postcolonial Bengal. Leftwing outrage and calls for rebellion (biplob/bidroh) were always around, I imagine. The historical trajectory from Tebhaga to Naxalbari seems pretty straight. Without getting into the nitty-gritty now, I just want to point to the class coalition that supported the Congress govt. of Dr. B.C. Roy in the Nehruvian era. Large (absentee?) landowners, the “boxwallahs,” the plantocracy, and the bespectacled bhadrolok in Kolkata were all cosy companions. Due to the structure of society in agrarian Bengal, especially after partition, a pro-landlord government was also necessarily a communal one (as Joya Chatterji’s recent book argues). The acquisition of rural land using a colonial-era law could hardly have been seen as anything but pro- upper-caste Hindu landlord (and the tiny colonial-era vestigial elite of planters and industrial houses). Do you really think the popular reaction outside Kolkata to this state of affairs could’ve been pro-state under those circumstances? There is perhaps an unwritten historical narrative of early postcolonial Bengal waiting to be told here. The one the bhadrolok didn’t write for purely self-interested reasons. (For a different reading of the same materials, contact Partha Chatterjee!)
As for Purbo versus Poshchim Medinipur, I think you might be aware from your recent travels, that the Purbo, including Haldia, is essentially a kind of colonial outpost for the bhadrolok and his ilk. The Poshchim, on the other hand, is an extension of the Chotanagpur Plateau, and has thus been part of the demand for Greater Jharkhand. The differences in socioeconomic indicators and industrialization one finds pretty much explains why there have always been two Bengals: the bhadrolok’s and the tribal’s, the latter acting as the Other for the former. Of course, a third Bengal has also existed historically in the East, but for the upper-caste Hindu bhadrolok, those lower-caste Hindus and Muslims were only there to be subordinated by them (nothing exotic about them for sure!).
P.S. If you are who I think you are, we really ought to be having this discussion via email:-) My email address: udaychandra84@gmail.com. I’m curious to know about your proposed research in Medinipur.
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